What is Interprofessional Education?
Interprofessional education (IPE) promotes active learning with, from and about each other with the overall goal to improve health outcomes through collaborative practice.

Interprofessional learning (IPL) occurs as a result of IPE. The ultimate goal is to develop work-ready health professionals who deliver broader benefit to clients and patients through improved collaborative interprofessional care.

The approach at Northern Health
Northern Health has developed and implemented interprofessional programs since 2004. These have included staff and students from medicine, nursing and allied health. Allied Health disciplines have included physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, dietetics, social work, podiatry, exercise science, pharmacy and orthoptics.

All the programs have been designed with learning outcomes and activities for participants to learn about their personal biases and the scope of their professional role, the scope of practice of other professionals and how to work more effectively and collaboratively in teams.

In 2017 a Northern Health Education staff member completed a systematic review of the evidence surrounding interprofessional education. Based on this and our previous experience, an innovative new interprofessional education program, the ‘Interprofessional Passport,’ has been developed. This will initially be tested with various student groups throughout 2018 followed by staff groups thereafter. The passport has been designed to facilitate interprofessional learning within a clinical context and works on the premise that the learner in consultation with their supervisors will tailor a program suitable to the learner’s needs.

For more information, please contact aheducationresearch@nh.org.au